"I'll see you in my dreams" Essential 5: David Lynch

  "My movies are film-paintings - moving portraits captured on celluloid. I'll layer that with sound to create a unique mood -- like if the Mona Lisa opened her mouth, and there would be a wind, and she'd turn back and smile. It would be strange and beautiful." - David Lynch

David Lynch is the rare artist capable of making the non-rational… digestible… maybe even understandable, and even if we can’t articulate that understanding, we can approximate it. Discussion inevitably turns to the darkness inside us all or the hidden face of seemingly idyllic communities. He often visualizes the fractured psyche, perhaps as a metaphor for society, or individuals, or even himself. Machines are a common motif, often juxtaposed with less ordered, organic imagery like physical deformities, fire, and waterfalls. All of this is true of Lynch, but beside the point. Few film authors are so visual, and none are quite so focused on evoking instead of explaining. Critics love to over-analyze Lynch, and I’m no exception.

For me at least, watching Lynch is like being under a spell. I’m mesmerized by the images, the story, and most of all by what it’s doing to me. Intellectual exercise is generally strenuous, and requires a great deal of conscious thought. With Lynch, though, you feel as if it is your subconscious getting the work-out. After I am done I feel as if I understand myself better or perhaps that I am more comfortable with myself in a way that is impossible to describe. Is intellectualism possible if it eludes your consciousness?

           

I’m going to resist the urge to delve deeper into the state Lynch puts me in. Nothing is more boring than someone else psychoanalyzing themselves. So, here are the essential films of David Lynch. His films taken together create a rich interconnected body of work that is best considered together. But you have to start somewhere and inevitably some make easier entrance points than others. If you are interested in this (very) important filmmaker I recommend starting here:

The Art of Criticism 6: Art and Objectivity

 ...All the same, if you say you dislike "The Godfather" or "Shawshank," I can't say you're wrong. The one thing you can never be wrong about is your own opinion. It's when you start giving your reasons that you lay yourself open. Many years ago there was a critic in Chicago who said "The Valachi Papers" was a better film than "The Godfather." "Phil," I told him, "film criticism is a matter of subjective opinion. Only rarely does it stray into objective fact. When you said 'The Valachi Papers' was better than 'The Godfather,' that was an error of objective fact." -Roger Ebert

All the recent bellyaching about Inception has again led many to criticize those reviewers who gave the film a negative review. This, of course, has opened up a whole can of worms about the value of the film reviewer (often incorrectly equated with a critic), of having dissenting opinions, and what qualifies as a valid opinion. Roger Ebert gives a nice little defense of his profession (above). Yet, I can't help feeling as if he's dancing around the solutions. He's certainly right when he states, "film criticism is a matter of subjective opinion." The problem though is when he tries to bring objectivity into the equation. Briefly, objectivity is "mind-independent" or free from any judgments made by an entity. This excludes Science, Religion, Literature, Film, etc, etc. The only things it doesn't necessarily exclude are Mathematics and Philosophy, the only fields where actual "discoveries" are made (not "inventions"). Basically, I point this out in reference to Ebert's quote from above, "only rarely does it stray into objective fact." What exactly is an "objective fact" and how is it different from a fact (and what does this have to do with anything?)? I'll tell you:

A Twin Peaks Corollary

Twin Peaks is almost certainly my favorite show and besides that it's one of the most important ever produced, opening the way for prime-time strangeness (of a lesser degree) from shows like The X-Files and the recently finished Lost. I usually tackle my favorite shows on this site with my "Essential 5" series (basically an excuse to exercise my love of lists), and although I could come up with the five most important episodes of the series pretty easily, they wouldn't make any sense out of the context. The denseness of its mythology is staggering. Its practically the anti-Tarantino, drawing us to images within the work instead of to references out of it (not to say it doesn't do that too). So all I can do is recommend that the series should be watched from the beginning (the Pilot, leave the movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me till after the series finale) and offer up some oddities and references that help understand the show.

David Lynch Does Dior

David Lynch has been quiet lately, not doing much beyond his weather reports and interview project. So news that he had moved back into fiction, even if it is only for a 16 minute ad, is very welcome. The short finds Lynch in full on video mode, creating his trademark creepy (yet compelling) moods in new and interesting ways. It almost seems like a self-parody at first but quickly become more soulful. I wouldn't call it his best work by a long shot but it's more than worth watching.

The Top 10 of the Decade

The decade is quickly coming to a close. What began as decade defined by (the now ridiculous) Y2K quickly turned serious on September 11, 2001. The relatively carefree 90's turned into a decade which seems, to me at least, to be most defined by the paranoia of the Bush presidency (the patriot act, the invasion of Iraq) and the recent financial collapse, which is just now finding its way onto the screen. The films this decade reply to the seriousness of the decade both by reflecting it with the realism of the Dardenne brothers, mumblecore, and Kelly Reichardt among others and by deflecting it with escapist cinema like Avatar, Lord of the Rings, Superhero films, and many others. This has resulted in a greater disjoint between art-house and mainstream cinema than ever before.

As I sift through all the other top 10 lists which have already been released I'm struck by just how diverse they are. It seems as if all end of the year lists turn out the same, yet somehow it seems as if when contemplating ten years instead of one everyone suddenly finds the ability to express something much more personal. One of the main problems with the critical landscape (and one of the reasons its shrinking) is how uniform it is. Who needs to read 20 different critics in 20 different publications when they are all saying the same thing. At the bottom I'll put a few links to lists I find interesting. And without further ado, my picks for the 10 best of the decade, 2000-2009: